Notes on some Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets

HP Blavatsky @ Theosophy Trust

The Tibetan esoteric Buddhist doctrine teaches that
Prakriti is cosmic matter, out of which all visible forms are produced;
Âkâsha is also cosmic matter, but still more imponderable, its
spirit, as it were; Prakriti being the body or substance, and Âkâsha-Shakti
its soul or energy.

Prakriti, Svabhâvat or Âkâsha is Space, as the Tibetans
have it; Space filled with whatsoever substance or no substance at all,
i.e., with substance so imponderable as to be only metaphysically
conceivable. Brahman, then, would be the germ thrown into the soil of that
field, and Shakti, that mysterious energy or force which develops it, and
which is called by the Buddhist Arahats of Tibet, Fohat.

"That which we call Form (Rûpa) is not different from that
which we call Space (Shûnyatâ) . . . Space is not different
from Form. Form is the same as Space; Space is the same as Form. And so
with the other Skandhas, whether Vedanâ, or Sanjña, or Sanskâra
or Vijñana they are each the same as their opposite." (Book
of Sin-king or the "Heart Sûtra." Chinese translation
of the Mahâ-Prajñâ-Pâramitâ-Hridaya-Sûtra;
chapter on the "Avalokiteshvara," or Manifested Buddha.)

So that, the Âryan and Tibetan or Arhat doctrines agree perfectly
in substance, differing but in names given and the way of putting it, a
distinction resulting from the fact that the Vedântin Brâhmans
believe in Parabrahman, a deific power, impersonal though it may
be, while the Buddhists entirely reject it.

APPENDICES

I.

The country called Si-dzang by the Chinese, and Tibet by Western geographers,
is mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the province of Fo-kien (the
chief headquarters of the aborigines of China) as the great seat of occult
learning in the archaic ages. According to these records, it was inhabited
by the "Teachers of Light," the "Sons of Wisdom" and
the "Brothers of the Sun." The Emperor Yu, the "Great"
(2207 B.C.), a pious mystic, is credited with having
obtained his occult wisdom and the system of theocracy established by him for
he was the first one to unite in China ecclesiastical power with temporal
authority from Si-dzang. That system was the same as with the old Egyptians
and the Chaldees that which we know to have existed in the Brâhmanical
period in India, and to exist now in Tibet namely, all the learning,
power, the temporal as well as the secret wisdom were concentrated within
the hierarchy of the priests and limited to their caste. Who were the aborigines
of Tibet is a question which no ethnographer is able to answer correctly
at present. They practise the Bhon religion, their sect was pre-buddhistic
and anti-buddhistic, and they are to be found mostly in the province of
Kam that is all that is known of them. But even that would justify
the supposition that they are the greatly degenerated descendants of mighty
and wise forefathers. Their ethnical type shows that they are not pure Turanians,
and their rites now those of sorcery, incantations, and nature-worship remind
one far more of the popular rites of the Babylonians, as found in the records
preserved on the excavated cylinders, than, as alleged by some, of the religious
practices of the Chinese sect of Tao-sse a religion based upon pure
reason and spirituality. Generally, little or no difference is made even
by the Kyelang missionaries who mix greatly with these people on the borders
of British Lahoul and ought to know better between the Bhons and
the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow Caps and the Red Caps. The latter
of these have opposed the reform of Tzong-ka-pa from the first, and have
always adhered to old Buddhism, so greatly mixed up now with the practices
of the Bhons. Were our Orientalists to know more of them, and compare the
ancient Babylonian Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the Bhons, they
would find an undeniable connection between the two. It is out of the question
to begin an argument here to prove the origin of the aborigines of Tibet
as connected with one of the three great races which superseded each other
in Babylonia, whether we call them the Akkadians (invented by F. Lenormant),
or the primitive Turanians, Chaldees and Assyrians. Be it as it may, there
is reason to call the Trans-Himâlayan esoteric doctrine Chaldæo-Tibetan.
And, when we remember that the Vedas came agreeably to all traditions from
the Mansarova Lake in Tibet, and the Brâhmans themselves from the
far north, we are justified in looking on the esoteric doctrines of every
people who once had or still have them, as having proceeded from one and
the same source, and to thus call it the "Âryan-Chaldæo-Tibetan"
doctrine, or Universal Wisdom Religion. "Seek for the Lost Word among
the hierophants of Tartary, China and Tibet," was the advice of Swedenborg,
the seer.

II.

The Vedas, Brâhmanism, and along with these Sanskrit, were importations
into what we now regard as India. They were never indigenous to its soil.
There was a time when the ancient nations of the West included under the
generic name of India many of the countries of Asia now classified under
other names. There was an Upper, a Lower, and a Western India, even during
the comparatively late period of Alexander; and Persia, Iran, is called
Western India in some ancient classics, and the countries now named Tibet,
Mongolia, and Great Tartary were considered as forming part of India. When
we say, therefore, that India has civilized the world and was the Alma Mater
of the civilizations, arts and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia,
and perhaps even Egypt, included), we mean archaic, prehistoric India, India
of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the lost Atlantis formed
part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himâlayas and ran
down over Southern India, Ceylon, Java, to far-away Tasmania.

III.

To ascertain such disputed questions [as to whether or not the Tibetan
adepts are acquainted with the "esoteric doctrine taught by the residents
of the sacred Island", we have to look into and study well the Chinese
sacred and historical records a people whose era begins nearly 4,600
years back (2697 B.C.). A people so accurate by
whom some of the most important -inventions" of modern Europe
and its so much boasted modern science (such as the compass, gunpowder,
porcelain, paper, printing, etc.), were anticipated, known, and practised
thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the Europeans ought
to receive some trust for their records.

From Lao-tze down to Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions
and references to that Island and the wisdom of the Himâlayan adepts.
In the Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, by the Rev.
Samuel Beal, there is a chapter "On the Tian-Tai School of Buddhism
" (pp. 244-258), which our opponents ought to read. Translating the
rules of that most celebrated and holy school and sect in China founded
by Chin-che-chay, called the wise one, in the year 575 of our era, on coming
to the sentence, "That which relates to the one garment (seamless)
worn by the Great Teachers of the Snowy Mountains, the school of
the Haimavatas" (p. 256), the European translator places after it a
sign of interrogation, as well he may. The statistics of the school of the
Haimavatas or of our Himâlayan Brotherhood, are not to be found in
the General Census Records of India. Further, Mr. Beal translates a rule
relating to "the great professors of the higher order who live in mountain
depths remote from men," the Âranyakas, or hermits.

So, with respect to the traditions concerning this Island, and apart
from the (to them) historical records of it preserved in the Chinese
and Tibetan Sacred Books, the legend is alive to this day among the people
of Tibet. The fair Island is no more, but the country where it once bloomed
remains there still, and the spot is well known to some of the "great
teachers of the snowy mountains," however much convulsed and changed
its topography may have been by the awful cataclysm. Every seventh year
these teachers are believed to assemble in Scham-bha-la, the "happy
land." According to the general belief it is situated in the north-west
of Tibet. Some place it within the unexplored central regions, inaccessible
even to the fearless nomadic tribes; others hem it in between the range
of the Gangdisri Mountains and the northern edge of the Gobi Desert, south
and north, and the more populated regions of Khoondooz and Kashmir, of the
Gya-Pheling (British India) and China, west and east, which affords to the
curious mind a pretty large latitude to locate it in. Others still place
it between Namur Nur and the Kuen-Lun Mountains but one and all firmly
believe in Scham-bha-la, and speak of it as a fertile, fairy-like land,
once an island, now an oasis of incomparable beauty, the place of meeting
of the inheritors of the esoteric wisdom of the god-like inhabitants of
the legendary Island.

In connection with the archaic legend of the Asian Sea and the Atlantic
Continent, is it not profitable to note a fact known to all modem geologists that
the Himâlayan slopes afford geological proof that the substance of
those lofty peaks was once a part of an ocean floor?

IV.

We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference
between the Buddhistic and Vedântic philosophies was that the former
was a kind of rationalistic Vedântism, while the latter might
be regarded as transcendental Buddhism. If the Âryan esotericism
applies the term Jîvâtma to the seventh principle, the pure,
and per se unconscious, spirit it is because the Vedânta
postulating three kinds of existence (1) the Paramârthika, the
true, the only real one; (2) the Vyavahârika, the practical; and (3)
the Pratibhâshika, the apparent or illusory life makes the first
Life or Jiva, the only truly existent one. Brahma or the One Self is its
only representative in the universe, as it is the universal Life,
while the other two are but its "phenomenal appearances," imagined
and created by ignorance, and complete illusions suggested to us by our
blind senses. The Buddhists, on the other hand, deny either subjective or
objective reality even to that one Self-Existence. Buddha declares that
there is neither Creator nor an Absolute Being. Buddhist rationalism
was ever too alive to the insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute
consciousness, as in the words of Flint "wherever there is consciousness
there is relation, and wherever there is relation there is dualism."
The One Life is either absolute and unconditioned (Mukta) and can have no
relation to anything nor to anyone; or it is bound and conditioned (Baddha),
and then it cannot be called the Absolute; the limitation, moreover, necessitating
another deity as powerful as the first to account for all the evil in this
world. Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony admits but of one
absolute, indestructible, eternal and uncreated Unconsciousness (so to translate),
of an element (the word being used for want of a better term) absolutely
independent of everything else in the universe; a something ever present
or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever was, is, and will be, whether there
is a God, gods, or none; whether there is a universe or no universe; existing
during the eternal cycles of Mahâ Yugas, during Pralayas and during
the periods of Manvantara; and this is Space, the field for the operation
of the eternal Forces and natural Law, the basis (as our correspondent rightly
calls it) upon which take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akâsha-Prakriti,
guided by the unconscious regular pulsations of Shakti the breath or
power of a conscious Deity, the theists would say the eternal energy
of an eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space then, or Fan Bar-nang
(Mahâ Shûnyatâ) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the "Emptiness,"
is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute. (See Confucius Praise of
the Abyss.) The word Jîva, then, could never be applied
by the Arahats to the seventh principle, since it is only through
its correlation or contact with matter that Fohat (the Buddhist active energy)
can develop active conscious life; and since to the question "How
can unconsciousness generate consciousness?"the
answer would be: "Was the seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton
self-conscious?"

[Vol. III. No. 4, January, 1882.
H. P. Blavatsky

* The following are a collection of notes and appendices
on an article, entitled "The Âryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets on the
Sevenfold Principle in Man," by T. Subba Row, B.A., B.L. EDS.back to text